EA’s John Riccitiello Thinks You Are A Pirate or Stupid

Posted by Stropp on October 17, 2008

If you protested about Spore’s DRM, then the EA CEO reckons that about half of you are pirates.

In an interview at Gamasutra, Riccitiello says this about the people protesting the heavy handed DRM that EA included in Spore.

‘I’m guessing that half of them were pirates, and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn’t understand,” he says. “If I’d had a chance to have a conversation with them, they’d have gotten it.

Since I protested about the DRM in my article about DRM being Dumb, Rude, and Mean to the people who are actually buying your game, and since I don’t pirate myself (I have since bought and played Spore), then he must be talking about you being the pirate.

On the other hand, he is saying that the other half of those protesting don’t understand what they were protesting about.

No Mr Riccitiello, I get it. I know what I’m annoyed about.

If I buy a game, I want to be able to go back anytime and play it again. If in ten years I decide to head down memory lane and load up an old game, I want to be able to do so — even if the authentication servers are no longer in use.

Granted, I am not able to do that with many of my old games since technological issues make it harder to do so. A few years ago I tried to load up the original Dark Reign RTS only to find that the developers had (for some incomprehensible reason) tied it to a particular version of DirectX. And while it’s possible to get old DOS games working, it’s not exactly conducive to a spur of the moment decision to revisit a past game.

But, what you are doing Mr Riccitiello is deliberately putting roadblocks in EA games that will prevent your customers being able to play their legally purchased games at any time that you decide to turn off authentication.

I get that you don’t want people pirating your games. If I was in your position, I’d feel the same way. EA is a business, and it needs to make a profit. Nothing wrong with that.

The problem is that you are targeting the wrong people. The pirates will crack your DRM, rendering it useless.

Since you were using a third party system, it’s likely the crackers knew how to beat your DRM well before Spore was released. The first cracker probably had Spores DRM broken half an hour after he got home from the game store, and that included making a cup of coffee.

What I don’t get is why you hurt your customers by giving them ridiculously low installs and making them jump through hoops to get more. The game won’t even play without an Internet connection. Kinda makes playing Spore on a long plane trip nigh on impossible.

By your own statistics, only a tiny fraction of your customers install a game more than once or twice. These are still legitimate customers. By using the Securom nastiness, you are completely disrespecting your customers.

Mr Riccitiello, here’s a free tip.

If you want to get more customers, treat the ones you have with a bit more respect. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forces in any business. We’ve all heard the statistics that say that a happy customer will tell two or three others that they are unhappy, whereas an unhappy customer will tell everyone he knows.

Telling those of us that don’t like your customer unfriendly DRM that we are thieves, or that we don’t get it isn’t likely to gain you much respect.

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